The authorities believe Ortiz is the first person to be convicted of a crime for SIM swapping, an increasingly popular and damaging hack. The practice involves someone transferring a phone number to a different SIM card, without the owner’s approval. The thief will call a phone carrier and say that they lost their SIM card, and ask to get the number ported to another phone. If successful, they can then take over their target’s accounts by intercepting their two-factor authentication texts.